Seòmar agus comataidhean

It did not work though, did it? Otherwise, we would not have seen the attainment gap widening again.

You put in place significant mitigations to adjust grade boundaries, and that did not deliver the result that you expected. It delivered the status quo, going back to the pre-pandemic period. All the measures that you took were to make things easier for you to produce a result that was acceptable. That did not provide intensive support to young people to help them to catch up on their learning, did it?

I want to go back to the point about parity of esteem. I am interested in your views on whether, in the policy that is coming from the Parliament and the Government, the message is strong enough in support of college education.

It will not come as a surprise to anyone on the committee to hear about the challenges that you have in communicating that to the SQA. I wonder whether the issue goes wider, to politicians, the Parliament and the Government, too. We all say that college education is important and that colleges have a key role, but is the political support there to make parity of esteem real? That might be a difficult question.

Have other people experienced that issue? I am particularly interested in whether teaching staff are present on smaller campuses or whether there is now a move to beam people in to teach.

Heather Innes touched on the consistency of investment across smaller campuses. I am interested in whether there is a uniform position or whether smaller campuses tend to miss out.

A second issue is whether staff are always there on smaller campuses. It is not just about students being on campus. With the move towards more digital delivery, I have had feedback that teaching staff are often not present on smaller campuses, or they are beamed in from other sites. Have you experienced that?

If the Deputy First Minister agrees with me, and he thinks that that is the action that his Government should have taken, or that a future Government should take, surely he would want that protection in the bill to make sure that the debate is had properly at the time, and that the right to education is prioritised above other aspects of society.

There is nothing in amendment 118 that would prevent the Government from acting. It would introduce a duty to seek and have regard to a report. It does not mean that the Government would have to stop if such a report was not forthcoming. The amendment is not designed as a delaying mechanism and I envisage that the report would likely follow action having been taken. It is not worded to be restrictive. I have been clear in drafting the amendment that that was what I sought to achieve. Does the Deputy First Minister accept that the report would be reasonable in principle provided that it did not delay ministers?

I accept the drafting issues. However, on the principle of school-based education being provided by local authorities in line with their statutory duties, what role do you see local authorities having? You said that the amendment would give them a veto, but you are effectively giving yourself the power through the bill to prevent them from carrying out their responsibilities. Do you accept that there must be a balance?

That is not really the point. You are taking away local authorities’ power to choose to keep a school open. You are removing their say in that and therefore preventing them from fulfilling their statutory duty, albeit possibly on good grounds. Is it not right to give them, rather than a veto, a greater say or role in reaching that decision in their locality with the young people and schools that they know best?

Given that you support that principle, do you recognise the value of putting it into the bill, maybe through a more tightly worded amendment, so that the position is a bit clearer and reassures the people who have to do the more difficult bit? I know that it is difficult to make the big decision, but it is more difficult to carry it out on the ground.